[Talk-us] Update for Great Smoky Mountains National Park

[Jeffrey Ollie]

On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 9:49 AM, Thomas Colson <thomas_colson at nps.gov> wrote:
> Great Smoky Mountains National Park is planning to update its core base
> data. We have identified many inconsistencies in online location-based data
> which often results in hazardous navigation scenarios for park visitors
> (e.g. travel on a closed trail, wrong way on road, etc…) and plan to slowly
> migrate our latest data collection to the public domain. In addition, we are
> including many new Points of Interest and other man-made features not
> presently included in the park OSM footprint.

I think that this is an awesome project.  It's been a while since I've
been to the park, but I've been daydreaming about a visit to the park
this summer in conjunction with a Linux user conference.  Probably
won't happen due to time & budget constraints but I'm glad to see
these sort of improvements to the map.

One question about what I saw on the wiki page.  I can understand not
wanting the public to drive on administrative roads, but are those
roads closed to hikers as well as vehicular traffic?  I can understand
keeping hikers off of the roads under normal circumstances but if I
was out hiking a trail that crossed an administrative road I'd be
pretty confused if the map on my GPS didn't show it.  I'd find them
useful as navigational references if nothing else.  I would think that
it'd be useful in emergency situations as well.  For example if a
group of hikers was trying to evacuate an injured/sick person an
administrative road could be a quicker way to get to more advanced
medical care.  Or for volunteers conducting a search for lost hikers.

-- 
Jeff Ollie